In a conventional communication terminal such as a facsimile apparatus, communication is preformed with a computer apparatus such as a personal computer via an interface such as a Centronics interface. For example, image data received from a remote facsimile apparatus via a communication line is transferred to a personal computer so as to visually output the image data by displaying on a display apparatus or printing on the personal computer side. The received image data may be recorded as a file on a hard disc or processed by an optical character reader application so as to extract text data. Additionally, the image data may be transferred from an application on the personal computer to a facsimile apparatus so that the image data transferred from the personal computer is sent to a remote facsimile apparatus.
In the conventional communication terminal such as a facsimile apparatus, information with respect to operations of the apparatus is announced to a user by a visual output such as a display of a report based on the information with respect to operations of the apparatus or a record of the information on a recording paper by a plotter.
Specifically, the apparatus announces contents of various settings of the apparatus to a user. For example, a report is prepared based on contents of settings of the apparatus, and the report is visually output in accordance with a report output requesting operation of the user. As for the contents of settings to be displayed, there is a setting state for correspondence between each one-touch key and a name and a telephone number of a remote party in a one-touch dial function; a setting state for correspondence between each shortened number and a name and a telephone number of a remote party in a shortened number dial function; a setting state for a programmable function to register a procedure (a designation of transmitting time) for a transmitting operation for a predetermined address to a specific one-touch key; and a setting state of parameters of a predetermined value such as an original document reading line density or an image recording intensity which cannot be fixed at the time of delivery as the setting varies for each user.
Additionally, as for the information related to an operation of the apparatus, information (communication management information) with respect to communication with a remote terminal other than settings for the apparatus is included.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No.4-172753 discloses a technique for accumulating and storing information (communication management information) with respect to communication in order to manage communication with a remote facsimile apparatus. As the communication management information, for example, there is information with respect to date (and time) of transmission and reception; information with respect to a facsimile number and a name of a remote facsimile apparatus, which are announced by the remote facsimile apparatus in a protocol procedure of a facsimile communication; information with respect to distinction as to whether a communication mode is G3 or G4; information with respect to resolution of received image information; information with respect to communication time; information with respect to the number of pages included in transmitted and received image information; information with respect to distinction as to whether a result of the transmission is normal or abnormal; and information with respect to communication cost.
If the communication management information is accumulated for a predetermined number of communications or if a user requests an output of the communication management information, the communication management information which is stored as internal expression codes such as a value “1” for the result indicating normal and a value “0” for the result indicating abnormal is converted into a character code, that is, for example, the value “1” when the result of transmission is normal is listed in accordance with a predetermined format by converting the value “1” into a character code (79, 75) which corresponds to a character string “OK”. Thereafter a string of character codes corresponding to the information management report is prepared. Additionally, for example, font data corresponding to the character string “OK” is read so as to develop the image of the character string “OK” on a memory in order to prepare image data of the communication management report. The image data thus prepared is output by being displayed on a display unit or recorded on a recording paper.
As mentioned above, in the conventional communication terminal such as a facsimile apparatus, a communication report is produced and output on recording paper so as to manage communications with a remote communication terminal. Accordingly, if there are many communications, the communication management report is recorded and output frequently. Thus, large amounts of recording paper is used to output the communication management report. Additionally, when the large amounts of communication management reports is output by being recorded on recording paper, there is a problem in that such management is very inconvenient when the user manages the communications of the communication terminal for each period of time, such as on a monthly basis.
Additionally, when the communication management report is displayed on a display unit, a display area of the display unit must be enlarged so as to display the communication management information in the form of a list such as a record on recording paper. Accordingly, the capacity of an image memory must be increased. If the display area is small, the capacity of the image memory can be decreased, however, an operability is decreased since the communication management report must be displayed one by one. Additionally, the communication management report displayed on the display unit is used only for a visual check and cannot be used for other purposes.
As mentioned above, as long as the communication terminal outputs the communication management report by recording on recording paper in the terminal or displaying it on a display unit, there is a problem in that the user cannot perform a systematic management of the communication management report of the communication terminal. Additionally, there is a problem that recording paper is wasted. Further, the same kind of problem occurs with respect to various information related to an operation of the apparatus including contents of the setting of the apparatus other than the communication management information.